The Best and the Worst

Israel’s advanced economy is endangered by a rapidly growing Third World-like sector.

By ZVI HELLMAN

June 17, 2010 14:51

Sweat shop workers-311.
(photo credit: Courtesy)

This article was published in The Jerusalem
Report on June 21, 2010. To subscribe to TheJerusalem Report, click here.

TRAVEL IN CERTAIN CIRcles in the major cities of Israel nowadays, and you might
be justified in feeling that things are going superbly well. In the high-tech
start-ups, far more per capita than in any other country, top-notch engineers
work on many of the most cutting edge projects in the world. If you want to
speak to someone with a PhD – there are more here per capita than in any other
country – just drop by an advanced seminar at the universities, now celebrating
a decade in which five Israelis were awarded Nobel Prizes in the sciences, three
times as many per capita as any other country. If you need a physician – yes,
there are more of them here per capita than in any other country – you can take
advantage of state-of-the-art medical treatments at acclaimed hospitals. Artists
and intellectuals abound.

The glittering new high-rises growing like
mushrooms after the rain in Tel Aviv are evidence of the wealth being
generated
in a country that, almost alone in the West, registered positive
economic
expansion last year and is emerging from the world economic crisis in
excellent
financial shape.

The future looks bright indeed. Or does it? If
you take
seriously the conclusions of the latest Annual State of the Nation
Report issued
by the Taub Center for Social Policy Studies in Jerusalem, an
independent,
nonpartisan, socioeconomic research institute, immensely troubling
trends have
been underway for decades that make Israel’s successes unsustainable, to
the
point of threatening its very survival.

“We are a super First
World country,
pushing the envelope in so many directions,” says Dan Ben-David, a
professor of
public policy at Tel Aviv University and the executive director of the
Taub
Center. “On the other hand, we are carrying a huge weight around our
neck.”

BEN-DAVID POINTS OUT THAT it is wrong to look at Israel
with what
is essentially myopia, seeing only the First World side of the country.
His
research shows that the country is more akin to two or more countries
stuck
together, with segments of Third World characteristics coexisting with
the First
World sector.

That might be tolerable if the Third World sector
were
slowly being eliminated, but Ben-David argues that the exact opposite is
the
case – the Third World elements are growing rapidly and will eventually
overtake
the country. An unsustainable burden is being placed on the fewer and
fewer
Israelis who can contribute effectively.

Perhaps most perturbing
in his
view, given the urgency of the situation, is how few people are even
aware of
the problem, much less giving thought to how to enact vital
reforms.

“Even I find much of this surprising, especially the
depth of
the dichotomy and the speed of change that is underway, despite my
familiarity
with the subject,” Ben-David tells The Report. “The way things are
going, we are
going to have major sustainability problems in the future. That does not
mean
that the sky is going to fall one day, but we will reach a point of no
return,
almost without noticing it. The analogy I use is a boiling frog. Place a
frog in
a boiling pot of water, and it will leap out. But if you raise the
temperature
slowly and gradually, it will not feel that it is being cooked. That is
what is
happening to us. And I don’t want to be cooked.”

AS BEN-DAVID
RELATES HIS
findings, one theme quickly emerges as paramount: education.

One
would
expect that a country that has for the past two decades staked its
economic
wellbeing on exporting advanced technological products and services
would place
the highest possible emphasis on pushing forward education, from
pre-school to
post-doc. But the Taub Center’s studies show the opposite is
happening.

“We have lost our way,” says Ben-David.

“In the
1960s,
Israeli schoolchildren were first in international comparisons of
educational
achievements in mathematics, science and reading. Now we are
consistently at, or
near, the bottom.”

Not only that, the education gaps between the
best and
worst pupils in Israel are the greatest amongst OECD countries. Does
that mean
that at least the top students can be counted on to attain
super-achievements?
No, replies Ben- David. “Our top 5 percent, our best and brightest, are
at the
bottom of the heap in the OECD [compared to the top 5 percent in other
nations].
And this in a country filled with pride at its Nobel Prize winners.”

The
low attainments in primary and secondary education inevitably affect the
quality
of higher education, which is supposed to provide the basis for
innovation. “As
a professor,” reports Ben-David, “I give my university students reading
assignments, which they refuse to read. They often don’t have the skills
to
write, either.”

Investment in university faculties has been
stalled for
decades. “This was a poor country in the 1950s and 1960s, but it knew
what it
wanted – it grew seven major universities. Since then, we have not
created one
new major research university, not one, even though the population has
doubled.”
The situation in the existing universities is just as bad. Since 1973,
the
Technion has added a total of one faculty position. And that is the good
news.
The Hebrew University and Tel Aviv University now have 14 to 20 percent
less
faculty positions.

“We are going in reverse,” concludes Ben-David
sadly.

For the past several decades, however, Israeli
universities have
produced cohorts of world-class academics, who have moved abroad, due to
a lack
of opportunities at home.

The numbers are staggering: about 2
percent of
British academics have moved to the United States. The comparable figure
for
France is nearly 3 percent, and over 4 percent for Italy.

Canada,
bordering the United States, has lost about 12.2 percent of its scholars
to its
larger neighbor. The numbers for Israel, however, are in another league
altogether: for every 100 Israeli academics in Israeli universities,
24.9 are
working in the United States.

The potential win-win remedy for
this state
of affairs has been clear for a long time. By increasing the number of
faculty
positions available at universities, the growing population of Israeli
students
can benefit from smaller classes taught by returning world-class
scholars, while
the painful brain drain of creative minds from the country is reversed.
But
although the subject has been discussed for several years, little has
been done
on the ground to make it happen.

ALL THAT SOUNDS BAD enough, but
it
describes only the situation in Ben-David’s “First World sector.” Since
the
founding of the state in 1948, the primary and secondary educational
system has
been divided into several independent school systems. The main
educational track
is the general Hebrew-instructional state school system, serving the
secular
Jewish population.

There is also a Jewish religious state school
system,
an Arab-instruction state school system, for the Arab minority, and an
independent haredi school system.

The Arab school system has
always
lagged far behind the Jewish sector in educational attainment. The
haredi school
system, although required by law for many years to teach its pupils a
core
curriculum that includes instruction in mathematics, history, and
English as a
second language, regularly ignored the requirement, providing at best
perfunctory classes in those subjects at the lowest possible level, and
sometimes not teaching them at all. Male highschool students in the
haredi
system typically study religious texts exclusively.

The net
result, says
Ben-David is that “we have the worst education in the Western world.

In
the past decade, even the non-haredi Jewish sector has performed at a
low level
compared to most of the First World. The Arab sector’s education is at
Third
World levels, and the haredi sector is not even learning what is taught
in the
Third World.”

Poor education hampers a person’s job and earning
potential
for an entire lifetime. The statistical correlation between educational
attainment and income, work productivity, and labor participation could
hardly be tighter.

Labor productivity in Israel
has been slipping behind other advanced nations over the past three
decades.
Concomitant with that fall, the rate of increase in GDP per capita,
compared to
the United States, has also stalled.

Rises in GDP per capita were
so
sharp in the 1950s and 1960s that by 1972, Israel was on track to reach
US
levels by the 1990s, but in the post-Yom Kippur War period the trend
line took a
turn for the worse.

THE LOW LEVEL OF LABOR participation in
Israel, which
translates into a heavy burden on the working population to carry the
non-working, has been noted for years. Among men aged 35 to 54, who are
expected
to be the main breadwinners in the economy, the average non-employment
in the
OECD is 11.9 percent. Israel is far at the bottom of the list, with 18.9
percent
nonemployment.

What skews the figures, as is well known, are the
Arab and
haredi sectors, with about 27 percent of Israeli Arab males and an
astounding 65
percent of haredim in the 35 to 54 age group not working.

Education
plays
a significant role here.

Among Arab women without a high school
degree,
fewer than 10 percent work, compared with 70 percent of Arab women with
degrees.

Among Arab men and non-haredi Jewish men and women, 90
percent
who have earned a high school degree work.

Among haredi men,
cultural
attitudes that regard a man’s proper role as being a yeshiva student all
his
life hinder labor force participation.

But the lack of a firm
grounding
in basic subjects in early schooling also has the effect of reducing the
employment potential of products of the haredi school system who do
choose to
work as adults, whether or not they choose to leave the haredi sector.
Woefully
unprepared, they must either arduously make up for years of lost
schooling on
their own, or give up on higher education and work in low-skilled,
lowpaying
jobs.

“Expecting someone to skip the most basic subjects in
schooling,
and then easily make up the lost gaps, is like cutting off someone’s leg
and
expecting him not to limp,” says Menashe Tsoref, recalling how hard he
needed to
struggle to be accepted to Haifa University and complete a degree there,
after a
childhood in the haredi school system. “We are talking about people in
their
twenties literally learning the ABCs for the first time.”

A law
passed in
2008 permitting haredi schools to continue to receive state funding
without
teaching any subjects from the core curriculum has sparked an appeal to
the
Supreme Court to invalidate the law. The petitioners essentially argue
that the
state has a responsibility to provide all the children of the country
with the
elementary education they need to survive economically as adults, and
that just
as compulsory education requires parents to send their children to
school
regardless of their beliefs, the fact that some haredi parents may
oppose the
teaching of a core curriculum to their children should not impede the
state from
teaching it to them for the sake of their future welfare. The petition
was
presented to the Supreme Court in mid-May. There has also been
consideration of
the possibility of a class action suit, on behalf of products of the
haredi
school system, demanding compensation for the state’s failure to insist
on their
receiving an education appropriate for a modern economy.

“I took
on this
case because of what I saw my students go through,” says Yaacov Ben-
Shemesh,
who is one of the authors of the petition.

Ben-Shemesh teaches
law in the
Ono Academic College in central Israel, which has a campus dedicated to
haredi
students. “I had students who were completely unprepared for their
studies,
because of the lack of knowledge of English, of basic quantitative
reasoning,
and even familiarity with the assumptions of modern democratic
governance and
law. They themselves complained about the difficulties they faced and
blamed
their school system.

Unfortunately, not one of those who
complained to me
privately eventually agreed to join the petition to the Supreme Court –
they are
too afraid of paying a price for such a public statement, which itself
points to
deep problems.”

THE MOST PERTURBING aspect of Ben-David’s
prediction for
the future is his reading of the trend lines. In 1960, only 15 percent
of
children entering primary school came from the Arab and haredi sectors.
By the
1980s, that number had risen to 26 percent, growing further to 40
percent in
2000, and fully 48 percent in 2008.

If the trends continue
unabated, says
Ben-David, by 2040, “78 percent of primary school enrollment will be
haredi and
Arab.

Look at what happened over the past 20 to 30 years, and
consider
what the country will look like in another 20 to 30 years. That is
simply
unsustainable. We will reach a point of no return, when we will not be
able to
fund the growing non-working population.

At that point, the
non-working
population will have no choice but to work – but they will not have the
tools to
deal with a modern economy. The result will be that this country will
not be
able to compete or survive economically.

Given the neighborhood
we live
in, that means we will not survive at all.”

Not surprisingly, he
urges
education reform, which must go beyond throwing money at the issue –
Israel, he
notes, was until recently spending more per pupil than most OECD
countries. He calls for higher targets, longer school days, enrichment
programs, reevaluation of teaching methods and, of course, a core
curriculum.
“Insisting on a core curriculum means deciding what sort of a country we
want,”
he says.

“I have shown these facts and figures to every prime
minister
since Ehud Barak [in 1999],” continues Ben-David. “The leadership is
surprised
every time I explain the trends to them. Many of them remember when they
were in
school, back when the system was still excellent, and they are not aware
of the
changes that have occurred, and how fast they are taking
place.”

Ben-David blames a dysfunctional political system for
most of the
inaction on the matter so far. “The prime minister here appoints
government
ministers who know nothing about the ministries they head,” he says
angrily,
“and as if that were not enough, most of the time they want to replace
the prime
minister, so they have incentives to work against him, rather than with
him. And
at this point, one-third of the Knesset members are government
ministers, so
there is no real separation of powers.”

Perhaps surprisingly,
Ben-David
had an opportunity to be a political player himself, but chose to walk
away from
a Knesset seat that was his for the taking. “Ariel Sharon was so
concerned by
what I showed him on the subject that he invited me to join his
political party,
Kadima, to deal with the issues. But then Sharon had a stroke, Ehud
Olmert took
over, the priorities changed, and I was moved down the party list, and
so did
not enter the Knesset after the 2006 elections.

“In 2008, a
Kadima seat
in the Knesset was vacated, and I was next on the list. But by then I
was
appointed head of the Taub Center, and I felt I would have more impact
in that
position than as a back bencher in the Knesset for a short period of
time.”

BUT CAN POLITICAL WILL really overcome deeply entrenched
cultural
factors leading to low labor force participation? Ben-David argues that
it
can.

“The cultural factors are not as entrenched as they seem,
even to
the haredim themselves,” he says. “Today, about 65 percent of haredim
aged 45 to
54 do not work for a living. Thirty years ago, that number was only 20
percent.

“Haredi men in countries outside of Israel, such as the
US and
the UK, do work.

So it is wrong to say it is a cultural matter,
or that
‘it has always been this way.’ It is in fact a very recent phenomenon.
And when
they become the majority, there will be no choice – they will need to
produce
doctors and engineers. That does not mean they need to be non-religious,
not at
all. The more they become familiar with the modern workplace, they will
discover
it is not so bad, and that they can maintain their religion while being
part of
a modern economy.”

Ben-Shemesh broadly agrees. “There are
historic
precedents for the haredi world learning secular subjects, and it can
accommodate it,” he says. “It cannot, and should not, be done by
coercion. But
the law must be clear that a core curriculum is a requirement.

Once
that
is established, a committee with haredi representatives can be formed to
determine how secular subjects can be introduced smoothly into the
haredi school
system.”

Tsoref, familiar with the haredi system from the inside,
warns
that any attempt at coercion will only boomerang. “Push them, and they
will push
back,” he says. “But the right approach can make a change. There are
already
some haredi leaders who recognize the importance of teaching some
secular
subjects, such as mathematics and English.”

Ben-David insists
that,
despite all his gloomy warnings, there is plenty of reason to be
optimistic.
“Europe and other parts of the world are aging. We are a young country,
and that
is an advantage,” he says. “We are about the size of metropolitan
Philadelphia.
What we call peripheral areas here would be considered suburbs in other
countries, if we could just get our act together in terms of
infrastructure. And
in contrast to South America or South Asia, there is no need to import
skills
and knowledge. It is all here, but it is not filtering down.

“We
are the
anomaly of the Western world.

Few look as bad as we do, in terms
of
poverty, inequality, and poor education. On the other hand, few look as
good as
we do, in the areas in which we excel – we have the best universities
outside
the United States, some of the world’s best engineers and physicians. We
have
everything we need to outperform the world. If we just give our kids the
education they deserve, the sky is the limit. We can have the highest
income in
the world. So something has to give. Either we get rid of our Third
World
sector, or we get rid of our First World Sector. It’s our choice.”

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